"You should have been there … "

Out & About, by Howard Delo

Back in 1998, when I was still working for Fish and Game, I was up at Susitna Landing in late May or early June. Marilyn Wilson, the CEO of Ron's Riverboat Service, which operates the landing for the state, and I were out near the boat launch when we noticed a zillion small fish swimming up the Kashwitna River.

Marilyn had a short-handled landing net and two five-gallon buckets handy. She scooped up some fish into one bucket and handed me the net. I scooped out maybe a half-bucket of fish into the other container and took them home. That was my introduction to eulachon, better known locally as hooligan.

That evening, my wife and I smoked some and fried more up for dinner. Debby remembered her folks talking about how good hooligan tasted, but had never had any herself. The fish were great.

Later, I bought a long-handled dipnet with a fine mesh bag and a five-gallon bucket with a lid. We eagerly awaited the next season's run.

For one reason or another, I never got back out after hooligan again until this year. On May 28, I called the Anchorage Fish and Game information hotline to find out about the hooligan run down on Twentymile Creek, near Portage. The recording said the run was strong and had not yet peaked -- I figured the dipping would be good on that evening's incoming tide.

I drove more than 100 miles, one-way from my house, and was dipping two hours before high tide. To make a long story short, I got 11 fish in two hours of steady dipping -- hardly the strong run I had expected.

To make matters worse, the guy just downstream from me said, "You should have been here last year. I filled up a five-gallon bucket in 15 minutes." The guy just upstream from me said, "You should have been here last week. In 15 minutes, I caught over 30 fish."

Since the hotline had also said hooligan were in at the Willow, I called both the state parks office at Finger Lake and the Fish and Game office in Palmer the next day for confirmation. Both agencies told me the fish were due any time, but neither agency had firm knowledge that the fish had arrived in any numbers yet. It's better to talk to live people than listen to a recording.

Saturday afternoon, May 31, my wife and I were working in the yard. I happened to walk into the house just as the answering machine picked up a call. Marilyn left a message that folks were seeing hooligan up at Susitna Landing. I told my wife and 20 minutes later, we were on our way.

After arriving on site, we were told the fish had been seen out at the end of the campground, where the Kashwitna River joins the Susitna. We walked out to the river junction, gear in hand, only to find there were no fish in the area.

Disappointed, we headed back toward the launch. I remembered that the fish I had gotten before were in that vicinity, so I had some hope a school of eulachon might be holding somewhere near the launch area. We spotted a fair-sized school next to the riverbank.

I retrieved the dipnet and bucket from the truck and we proceeded to catch fish. In 15 minutes, during a drenching thunderstorm complete with hail the size of green peas, we caught 405 hooligan, or about two five-gallon buckets worth.

I know the exact number because, except for the 12 fish we had for dinner that evening, I rough-cleaned every one of those fish. My wife did the finish cleaning and the counting. We both packaged fish for the freezer.

Next year, if we meet along the Kashwitna, dipnets in hand, you'll probably hear me say, "You should have been here last …"

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist living in Big Lake. Send your comments and ideas to editor@frontiersman.com, or call (907) 352-2268 and leave a message for Howard.